Friday – San Diego, California
I woke as normal around 6am and started working on the blog, I was staying with Sandiegoland for the next few days so there may not be a chance of updating. I was packed and on the road around 9am and heading to Poway Motorcycles. On the way I saw a sign that highlights the ‘turn on red’ rule, here they signpost NOT to turn on red.
A small amount of freeway with very nice weather took me to the shop in no time and the bike was soon being checked over for the small (click/clunk/thunk) that I experience when I come to a full stop under front brakes.
So, Bill and Bud(not the flower pot men ), set up my front end for a check on the headset bearing. Well, the good news is there is nothing wrong with that, so that is a relief. 🙂 The not so good news is that the fork tube sliders are worn and the tubes are causing the front end clunk when coming to a stop. This is no big issue and will cause no further drama down the road, so I am good to go. They checked my suspension when I asked because something must be causing the problem up front. The ‘sag’ was out which means removing the shock to adjust it, so I can do that later at Craig’s place. This was a shock to me(no pun intended) as I had sent the shock back for a service and it had obviously(but not to me at the time) been adjusted out of the range I had set it at for my weight and load. This is my own fault as I do not understand all the suspension settings, needless to say I would need to learn it as now I have to go through the whole rigmarole again of setting everything up. Thanks for the help guys, see you on Tuesday when I pick up my spare fork seals and dust covers.
I called Craig(Sandiegoland) and he said come on over whenever, so I headed through the traffic and eventually arrived in San Diego, in fact I had been here for some time, but this sign proved it 🙂
After meeting Craig and thanking him for hosting me and helping with the bike, we got stuck into the work that needed doing. First job was to replace the front brake pads. They were not too badly worn, but I would keep the original set for a back up and the new ones are the sintered type, supposedly better lasting.
No action shots sorry, I did not think of it 🙂
The big job after a sanger for lunch was remove the rear shock, clean all the gunk off it(from the chain oiler) and adjust it. Basically it needed about five full turns to compress the spring which should give me enough preload where my external preload adjustment could then be set in the middle and adjust for more or less load. If that does not make sense, then don’t ask me as I have no idea yet! 🙂
Once that was back in and the external adjustments set to mid range we looked at the chain and sprockets. The chain was in good condition after only 11,000 miles, so was the rear sprocket, but the front was nearly shagged, this was a surprise as it was an OEM sprocket and should be in better condition than this 😦
The only thing I can think of is that there was so much gunk up under the cover, from sand and dirt build up with the excess oil from the chain oiler, that the front sprocket was running through semi liquid sandpaper!! But, then why did not the chain show any wear, I am stumped on this one! Needless to say, it needs replacing, so although this chain/sprocket kit was still young, it may have to be all replaced 😦 Craig had bought a wrecked bike that had a front sprocket that was only 9600 miles used, so I may choose to use that one if I cannot find a kit down here. Anyway, next step was to repair the belly pan, it had taken a big hit up on the Dalton Highway towards Prudhoe Bay and a piece was missing, when I took it off it showed more wear, but Craig had some old aluminium scraps from work that looked like they could be used to fix it and give it a bit more strength 🙂
It did seem to do the trick and I could leave my fancy Frankenstein stitching on as well 🙂 Now, the other day I bought over the phone another charging cable for my Bluetooth headset/music system. The cable I had was in the tank bag, so every night I needed to remove it and charge the headset, this I knew would cause a failure in a bad spot because of cable stress, so I ordered another to charge the headset with its own cable and this one could stay where it was 🙂 it cost $5, cheap as chips, but the postage cost $10!! Now, check out the way this tiny USB cable was packed, it was in a UPS envelope, inside a UPS box that would have held a damm set of car jumper leads!!!
Oh well, at least I have it so I am happy on that score 🙂 We then went down to the House of Motorcycles so I could buy some oil which I did before heading home for a BBQ pork chop night, great cooking, I love pork, I am glad I am non religious, I can eat and drink whatever I damm well like 🙂 This was beer of course and tonight I had bought a box of Coors heavy.
We chatted for a while and got to know each other a bit, his wife Lisa was away for the weekend, so it was a batch weekend 🙂
Day 41 miles and 6 km
Trip – 37,296 miles and 60,002 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
TravellingStrom 